Month: February 2014

Thanks to all who joined us for the first step in our grand public policy experiment!

With your participation, we kicked off our housing policy workshop with an excellent overview and substantive conversation led by Tim Reardon from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. Among other things, we learned about the demographic trends that show a need for more housing units, and with them, a larger labor force.

(This article was also published by the national Roosevelt Institute here.)

Innovative solutions are needed to solve the serious problem of housing affordability in the Boston area.

The housing affordability crisis is reaching dramatic levels in Massachusetts. Case in point: according to The Boston Foundation’s Greater Boston Housing Report Card, “during the last eight years, the cost of living in Greater Boston has increased twice as fast as the median household income of homeowners and three times faster than the median household income of renters.” Affordability is a problem for 40 percent of homeowners in the area. For many families, owning a home is not even an option. The U.S. Census ranks Massachusetts 44th in homeownership and also 44th in income equality. These two rankings are not coincidental.